Social responsibility
Post Office is a commercial business with a social purpose. We are one of the largest retail networks in the UK with 11,500 branches across the UK, within 1 mile of 93% of the population and within 3 miles of 99.7% of the population. These branches provide a range of vital services to local communities and our partnership with retailers helps support successful high streets across the country. Our branches perform over 14 million customer sessions each week, providing communities with access to cash and financial services for the local economy, mails services for customers and small businesses as well as a range of government services and identity products.
Our customers
Ensuring we deliver an excellent service and are as accessible as possible to everyone in society is an important part of our business. We provide a physical home for the digital world, helping everyone benefit from digital technology. As the largest financial services branch network in the country, our partnership with all the major high street banks means we support financial inclusion through access to cash in our 11,500 branches and through our 2,500 ATMs. Our Postmasters have an unrivalled relationship with their customers, often going beyond the call of duty to play a range of roles at the heart of their communities and support customers in a way few other businesses can.
Our business
It is important that our whole business runs on a sustainable basis, that’s why we are working to reduce our impact on the environment and ensure our supply chain meets the standards we expect.
Environment
Post Office works to minimise our impact on the environment by reducing our carbon emissions, carefully considering our energy and water use and ensuring we dispose of waste responsibly.
Our property and facilities team work to install technology such as low energy lighting and low flow taps.
The Post Office fleet team is working on new technology to use telemetry and hybrid vehicles to make every journey as efficient as possible and we are increasing the number of electric vehicles available to employees.
We are implementing biodegradable plastics in our supply chain, alongside an improved recycling regime, to minimise the waste we send to landfill, and make sure that waste which does go to landfill will biodegrade.
Supply chain
Post Office Ltd. purchases a range of products and services from a range of suppliers. All our suppliers are expected to comply with our Supplier Code of Conduct and we are increasing our procedures to audit our suppliers to measure their social value credentials.
Our people
Looking after our people is an important part of being a responsible business, it’s what makes sure we develop a culture of inclusivity across the whole business and Post Office is a leader in a number of areas on this agenda. Since 2017 the Post Office has become one of the UK’s fastest improving organisations for employee engagement (Aon November 2018). We have also been awarded Highly Commended as Engagement Company of the Year in the Employee Engagement Awards UK and Europe 2019.
We are a Disability Confident Leader, the highest accreditation available for being an accessible employer, supported by our Be You colleague engagement group which draws on the lived experience of colleagues with disabilities to ensure we are doing everything we can to be a disability-inclusive workplace.
Post Office was listed as a Times Top 50 Employer for Women for a fourth time in 2019, showing our commitment to being a champion of equal employment. We have also reduced our gender pay gap in the second year of reporting with a mean hourly pay gap of 17% in 2018 (down from 17.5% in 2017).
